Vice President JD Vance personally accompanied Charlie Kirk’s body from Utah back home to Arizona — a touching final tribute in a long friendship that helped launch the former President Trump critic into the White House and onto the international stage.
Vance cancelled plans to attend a 9/11 commemoration at Ground Zero in Manhattan at the last minute Thursday, opting instead to travel to Utah with his wife, Usha, aboard Air Force 2 to be with Kirk’s family and friends.
From there, the Turning Point USA founder’s remains were loaded onto the vice president’s plane and flown back to Phoenix with Vance at their side.
The presidential transport is a touching close to a friendship that began around 2017, when Vance was just coming around to Trump after staunch opposition during the 2016 election — a trajectory Kirk had also followed, before becoming one of the president’s loudest champions himself.
It’s a story Vance recounted in an extensive tribute to Kirk he posted on X Wednesday night, hours after the 31-year-old conservative icon was assassinated while holding one of his public debate events at Utah Valley University.
“A while ago, probably in 2017, I appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox show to talk about God knows what. Afterwards a name I barely knew sent me a DM on twitter and told me I did a great job. It was Charlie Kirk,” Vance wrote.
“Charlie was fascinated by ideas and always willing to learn and change his mind. Like me, he was skeptical of Donald Trump in 2016. Like me, he came to see President Trump as the only figure capable of moving American politics away from the globalism that had dominated for our entire lives,” he added.
“When others were right, he learned from them. When he was right–as he usually was–he was generous. With Charlie, the attitude was never, ‘I told you so.’ But: ‘welcome.’”
The pair became fast friends after that first interaction, with Vance telling how Kirk was one of the first calls he made when he decided to run for Ohio senator in 2021. Vance was skeptical he could win, but said Kirk calmly convinced him there was a way and took the time to talk out strategy.
Even before Vance decided his campaign was serious, Kirk asked him to speak at one of his Turning Point USA events — and afterwards walked the underdog candidate around the room to introduce everybody, and offered feedback on his remarks that day.
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“He had no reason to do this, no expectation that I’d go anywhere. I was polling, at that point, well below 5 percent,” Vance, 41, wrote. “He did it because we were friends, and because he was a good man.”
Vance and Kirk were around 27 and 37 then — both youngsters by political measure — and their shared youth meant they were well-positioned to reach a younger generation of conservatives. Kirk was already well-known at the time and became instrumental in championing Vance as one of the right’s shining stars.
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And Kirk was such a believer in the future veep that he even introduced him to Donald Trump Jr. at a time when the president and his family were still deeply skeptical of the bestselling “Hillbilly Elegy” author’s former criticisms.
“Don took a call from me because Charlie asked him too (sic),” Vance wrote.
Just three years later, Vance became the vice presidential nominee, but found his family was having a difficult time adjusting to the extremes of their new way of life — and said Kirk was always there to help him at every turn of the trying campaign trail.
“Our kids, especially our oldest, struggled with the attention and the constant presence of the protective detail. I felt this acute sense of guilt, that I had conscripted my kids into this life without getting their permission,” the former Ohio senator wrote.
“Charlie was constantly calling and texting, checking on our family and offering guidance and prayers,” he continued. “After every event, he would give me a big hug, tell me he was praying for me, and ask me what he could do.”
After Vance and Trump finally won the White House, the new vice president took Kirk onstage and personally thanked him for his friendship — a friendship many in the White House and conservative community recognized as a palpable force.
“I was talking to President Trump in the Oval Office today,” Vance continued on X. “And he said, ‘I know he was a very good friend of yours.’ I nodded silently, and President Trump observed that Charlie really loved his family.
“Charlie Kirk was a true friend. The kind of guy you could say something to and know it would always stay with him,” he added. “Charlie died doing what he loved: discussing ideas.”
“He exemplified a foundational virtue of our Republic: the willingness to speak openly and debate ideas.”
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